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Idealism dies hard in On the Job, a Filipino crime thriller that makes up in character development and action shots what it lacks in narrative innovation.

Director Erik Matti and his crew put together a Hollywood-beckoning drama that favorably recalls the bone-deep corruption and generational mentoring of A Prophet or Donnie Brasco or any number of similar genre films.

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“No one’s clean in this line of work,” a character observes, and the remark could apply to toilers on both sides of the law who are busily eliminating opposition to their illicit activities.

On the official bad side, we have experienced mob hit man Mario (Joel Torre) and his raw recruit Daniel (Gerald Anderson), who do their contract killings with a perfect alibi: they’re inmates in a Manila prison. They’re allowed out by a bought-off warden to do their dirty work, and even get to spend time with family members who think they’re working out of town.

On the so-called “good” side, the characters are even more complicated. We realize early on that government, military and police officials are far from lily-white, but we’re not sure at first what to make of hard-nut cop Acosta (Joey Marquez) who gets the job done like a Dirty Harry or Beat Takeshi.

As such films demand, Acosta is obliged to work with younger and even more determined protégés, in particular the buff and beautiful Francis (Piolo Pascual), whose tangled family connections are giving him grief.

Working with a script he co-wrote with Michiko Yamamoto, Matti takes time (arguably too much time) to define and draw empathy for his characters, both the white hats and the black hats.

In a tough city where everybody is working an angle, how do you tell what’s right and what’s wrong?

Where Matti excels is in action scenes, shot by Francis Ricardo Buhay III, that include a subway chase that recalls a similar one in The French Connection.

More than anything On the Job plays like a calling card for Hollywood gigs for Matti and possibly even an English-language remake – although the cast members weirdly shift between English and Filipino, often in mid-sentence.

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